"Qualcomm has revealed that its 1Ghz Snapdragon ARM chip will ship in an upcoming Lenovo smartbook. AT&T has already partnered with Lenovo to sell the product. New smartbook products will bring ARM into the small form-factor laptop market and could give Intel's Atom some serious competition."

They'll probably be heavily subsidized when bought with a carrier, same as cellphones. However, like you, I'm more interested in buying them without a carrier, but in all the times they've been brought up, the ONLY mention I've found of bringing them to market has been through carriers, which would seriously hamper the consumer uptake.